Technology: KineScribe

LabanWriter app for iPad; free in the iTunes store

Are your college students having a hard time understanding Labanotation, the dance notation system? Now you can present Labanotation in a format they’re familiar with: an app. KineScribe, developed by a Reed College dance professor, reimagines LabanWriter—a popular Labanotation editing program for Apple computers—for touch screens.

Writing notation is simple within the app: Just grab a symbol from the toolbar (with options for direction, level, path, rotation, text input and more) and begin creating a sequence. You can change the color of symbols to add another dimension—emphasis or meaning—to the score. And once scores are complete, you can e-mail them as PDFs directly from KineScribe.